Chinese architecture firm Wutopia Lab has renovated a pair of houses with fully pink and blue colors in a Dameisha village of Shenzhen, the houses renovated for the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture aims to distill boundaries about women and men in domestic life.

Called His House and Her House, the houses - dubbed as No.4 and No.5, are located in a Dameisha Village, a slum features Chinese characteristics with its traditional fabric. Architects aimed to break the invisible limit between the city and the village through the activation of the site. 

"The most basic human desire is to exist and live. Through the reflection on the case, we found that public kitchens are mostly in the charge of men, while women remain the main role in family kitchens," said the architects. 

For His House, the house's façade is painted with blue that is a symbol of survival and competition. The interior space refers to Matisse's paintings, painting the walls green in correspondence to blue ceiling and floor. Building No.5 has three rooms and a public restroom. The architects use triangles that appear on the doorknob and the door hole as the motif reinforces the masculine character.

"The desire for survival forces people to develop the ability to preserve food for longer, and human invents bacon and wine. Salt fields have a long history of bacon, and in this male house, bacon become the first exhibit," added the architects.

"We made a white secret room with sky light, and the floor is covered with white salt to show the history of salt fields. In the main interior space, we set up beer ponds, and the whole wall is decorated with empty beer bottles, which reveals the theme of "Wine Pool Meat Forest."

For Her House, the building shows the sensitivity, delicacy, delicacy of the existence created by women and man desire for existence contribute to the duality of each other. Carefully compared among the different pink colors and deciding to use light pink as the follow of green and using pink to brush all over building No.4.

The renovation of buildings 4 and 5 retains the original irregular window’s open, which is open according to the needs of different tenants at different times. Instead, these irregular windows create liveliness on the facade. The shutter doors were also turned into large glass windows, and the building opened to the square, allowing viewers to observe each other.

The patio is covered by pink rock salt, a hint of foundation contrasted with building No.5 before entering the pink house, it reinforced femininity character by a semicircular motif that appeared on the doorknob and in a doorway that connected with different spaces. 

The architect made holes in the walls of the original independent room, making space connect with each other freely. The intersecting of the doors holes caused the labyrinth’s hallucinations of in the room. 

The curtain that like veil wrapped facade, implying the introversion of female life, and creating a new facade in front of the original balcony, on which a thick level is created.

Masterplan 

Ground floor plan

Second floor plan

All images © Creatar

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